It would be hard to argue that bicycling in Houston is not on the upswing, with many millions of dollars approved and numerous policies passed in recent years, all aimed at welcoming and protecting riders.
City planners and cycling advocates see significant gaps in this progress, however, from uncertainty about the kind of cyclists Houston wants to serve to questions about what projects should take priority on which streets.
To fill these holes, city planners in the coming weeks will launch a $500,000 effort to produce a citywide bicycling plan, the first such comprehensive effort since 1994. Houston has set aside $100,000 for the plan, which will be led by outside consultants, and is raising the rest from private partners, said Pat Walsh, director of the city Planning and Development Department.
“This project is long overdue,” Walsh said. “The city has changed much in 20 years, the support and use of bicycling has increased significantly in 20 years, and we feel it’s time to revisit our planning for bicycle activities.”
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Michael Payne, executive director of Bike Houston, which is helping fund the planning process, said the initiative is a criticial step in the city’s evolution and, ideally, in the evolution of individual cyclists’ mindsets. Most cyclists today ride recreationally, he said, but safer routes would let more people ride comfortably around their neighborhood, then discover it is feasible to run a few errands or even to commute by bike.
National data suggest perhaps 1 percent of riders brave traffic, regardless of the conditions, he said, about 7 percent ride a bit and would like to ride more, and about 60 percent say they want to ride more but don’t feel safe doing so. This last group should be the main target of any policy study, Payne said.
“It’s about addressing the safety issue and about having separate bikeways so that people have both the perception of safety but also the reality of greater physical separation from cars,” he said. “We need to develop infrastructure that people 8 years old to 80 years old feel comfortable using. It’s not just about this aggressive, fast-paced cyclist, who’s typically a middle-aged man, white guy, affluent. We’re trying to meet the needs of a wide range of society.”
The general idea, Payne said, is to use the Bayou Greenways trails, which typically run east-west, and future trails envisioned along electric utility corridors, which often run north-south, as bike highways.
As high-speed, congested city streets are due to be rebuilt, protected bike lanes may be added. And on neighborhood streets, with slower speeds and fewer cars, cyclists could get striped paths similar to those on city streets today. However, Payne said, the paths ideally would be much wider, in line with 5-foot national standards, and better maintained.
Because these on-street improvements will take many years, Walsh said, part of the planning effort also will seek to identify “low-hanging fruit” – quick, cheap improvements with potentially high impact.
See here for the background. The main goal is to promote safety, largely via BikeHouston’s Goal Zero Fatalities, but also by the continued improvement of off-road bike trails, which will be getting a major boost in the coming years. Houston is a much more bike-friendly city than it was 20 or even 10 years ago. The more we can get people to swap cars for bikes for short trips, the better our roads and our air will be going forward. I look forward to seeing how this progresses.
Better education about bike safety on the road for driver and riders alike would provide uniform expectations and a safer riding environment.
Long way to go. Drivers in this town mostly do not recognize that bicyclists have rights. The danger with dedicated bike trails is that those in autos think us on bikes ought to be on those trails and nowhere else.